Friday, November 01, 2013

ABUJA — A surge in piracy in the Gulf of
Guinea this year has prompted West African leaders to establish a new
working group intended to combine maritime law enforcement efforts.
Analysts in Nigeria say security forces already have the capacity to
slow the attacks, but lack the political will.

In the rivers and creeks of Nigeria's Niger Delta, speedboat drivers say
piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has frightened some of their customers
away, but they continue to carry oil workers to the high seas.

The International Maritime Bureau
says West African waters are now among the most dangerous in the world -
far more dangerous than the waters off Somalia, where pirates have
become less active. A report this month said more than half of the
pirate killings and all of the kidnappings worldwide this year have
happened in the Gulf of Guinea. Most of the attacks were off the shores
of Nigeria.

Edward Oforomeh, a lawyer and former police superintendent, says pirate attacks off Nigeria also hurt Nigerians on shore.

“The increase in piracy is a threat to our economy, a very big threat to
our economy," Oforomeh said. "So I want to say that those responsible
for checking the hoodlums that are bent on this piracy, they should wake
up. They should wake up to their duties.”

Last week, an American ship captain and chief engineer of an oil supply
vessel were kidnapped off the Nigerian coast. U.S. officials accuse
pirates of the abduction and Nigerian Navy says it has a
search-and-rescue team on the water.

But some analysts say pirates are often better armed than the Nigerian
Navy. Nigerian security forces have the manpower and the training, but
not the resources they need to fight pirates, said Oforomeh.

“That is why we appear not to be able to cope. But if we were able to
equip them as overseas…countries equip their people, we will be able to
contain them.”

The International Maritime Bureau says all Nigerian waters “remain
risky,” but West African leaders say the danger is to the entire
region. At a meeting in Dakar last weekend, leaders from the West
African economic bloc, ECOWAS, announced they will establish a maritime
safety coordination center in Cameroon to combat “piracy, terrorism,
extremism and banditry at sea.”

But here in Nigeria, some analysts say beefed up security alone will not
make the waters safer. Abubakar Kari, a political science lecturer at
the University of Abuja, says criminals - even when they are caught -
are often not punished in Nigeria. Corruption, he adds, makes it harder
to catch them.

“By corruption I mean those whose duty it is to stop the piracy - I’m
talking of the security agents - sometimes are actually participants in
it," Kari said. "They collect money and gratification from the pirates
and allow them to perpetrate their acts.”

The International Maritime Bureau says the Nigeria is currently developing a new legal framework to combat piracy.

In mid-October, Nigeria hosted Spain, Britain, the United States, and
the Netherlands in a joint training operation because maritime security,
they said, is a “common global heritage to mankind.”

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